but as a treasure in itself."

THE "ARCADIA."

THE first meaning of the word lace is, I believe, simply a string. It is seen in another form, as latchet. "The latchet of whose shoes," etc., that is, "whose shoe-lace," though we also use the expressions, "shoestring" and "shoe-tie." So Crashaw in his pretty poem, "Wishes":

"I wish her-beauty,

That owes not all its duty

To gaudy 'tire, or glist'ning shoe-tie."

And the ladies of our own time speak of their stay-laces. Latch has the same origin, for the original latch was a string. Left hanging out, the latch-string meant hospi tality; whoever came along could pull it and let himself in. "Pull the latch, my dear, and come in!" said the wolf to little Red Riding Hood. But if the door were not to be opened, the string, the latch, was pulled in. Perhaps if one were to consult a

NO. 2. KNOTS FOR MACRAMÉ LACE.

dictionary, he might find "lassoo" to be derived from the same root.

In the sense of string, lace is often found in old English poetry. Chaucer, in describing the Shipman, says:

"A dagger hanging by a las hadde he About his nekke under his arm adown." And Spenser :

"Bind your fillets fast,

And gird in your waste,

For more fineness, with a tawdry lace." What the next stage was is not easy to trace. The string may have become a band, and this band may have been ornamented by drawing out some of the threads of the cloth and hemstitching the threads into a pattern. That a notion of open-work of threads spread about and dividing a surface up into irregular spaces had early become associated with the word lace is evident from Shakspere's use of that word in describing Duncan's appearance after his death:

"Here lay Duncan, His silver skin laced with his golden blood." That is, his blood was streaked about his face, and the white skin showed between. The earliest laces were produced in this natural, easy way. It was not till much later that "making" lace-creating a pattern out of threads by twisting them about pins stuck into a cushion, and in other ways far removed from the aboriginal and somewhat savage procedure first described-was introduced. The original lace-to employ the word in its modern acceptation-was Gothic in principle; it was "sincere," to use the fashionable slang of our day; it was an ornamentation produced by playing upon the actual structure of the thing ornamented.

At Shottery, the woman who lives in Anne Hathaway's house, and shows it to strangers, brings out, for a fee, a pair of sheets and two pillow-biers (or cases), which she alleges, and which we believe on the spot, to have

belonged to Shakspere, and to have made a part of the furniture of the famous second best bed. These sheets and pillow-biers are ornamented by two strips of lace that run the whole length of the sheets and across the middle of each pillow-bier in such a way that when the bed is " made up," and the pillows are in their places, the ornamented work makes a continuous band. This is as I remember it, but 'tis now nigh ten years since, and I may be mistaken in the detail. The woman, who played that her name, too, was Hathaway, informed me that in the old time these sheets were only used at lyingin times and at funerals. This may have been true, for certainly they were in good preservation after close upon three hundred years. She told me also that a lady came once a

for the darning she did was as delicate as lace.

Nowadays, when the Renaissance of the Old-Fashioned is in full vigor, our ladies, looking about for something to do, have welcomed the revival of the old ways of making lace as well as that of the old embroidery stitches. Some of them have performed wonders with the "darned lace," producing work as spirited as the old, which darned lace, by the way, was introduced to

esque handiwork. The turn of the tide has brought up, among other remembrances of the past, a lace with an odd name, " Macramé," derived, it is said, from the Arabic and signifying "fringed border."

This is an old manufacture, the original application of which appears to have been to supply garments, and even altar-cloths and towels with fringes. And the use of a fringe is, besides the use there is in ornament, the protecting the edges of that to

us on this side the water in a picture, I believe; for what attracts one person will attract another, and I remember how much my curiosity was excited by the table-cloth that Gérôme has put upon the table at which Molière is breakfasting with Louis XIV. in the picture well known by the engraving. And, if the reader cares for such trifling, he may find in another picture, the "Portrait of a Florentine Princess," by A. Bronzino, in the Bryan Gallery, New York Historical Society, a lovely hand and a lovely head encircled by some well-painted lace of the old knotted-work. The lady's handkerchief, too, is bordered with the same pictur

which it is applied from wear-and-tear. The Eastern people often put fringes a foot long upon the ends of their rugs, and besides blending the rug well with the floor,-shading it off, as it were,-these fringes really keep the edge of the rug from being turned up by the foot.

Now, for all such purposes, and for the trimming of dresses made of the sensible. coarse, and, we may add, picturesque, stuffs so much in use at present, the macramé lace will be found very serviceable. It is made of a strong and handsome linen thread spun by the Barbour Flax Company, and at the office of the Domestic Sew